Ajay is based in BCV's Palo Alto office and focuses on early stage software investing

Disrupting the $700B Trucking Industry

Announcing our Series A Investment in FourKites

The movement of physical goods is a massive undertaking in every industry – healthcare, industrials, retail, consumer products, etc. The demands of businesses and consumers are increasing: we want our goods to be delivered on time and in a matter of days, not weeks. At the same time, growth in over-the-road freight is outstripping that of drivers, creating a shortage that is only expected to worsen over time. As a result, supply chain efficiency has become paramount for every kind of business.

Today we’re announcing BCV’s investment in FourKites, a cloud platform for tracking the real-time movement of trucks to shippers globally. Founder and CEO Matt Elenjickal has spent the bulk of his working career in the transportation space, first at i2/JDA and then at Oracle. He recognized that tracking and real-time visibility was an unsolved but crucial problem, and in 2014 he founded FourKites to solve it. His knowledge, domain expertise, and depth in this space is unparalleled and has enabled the FourKites team to achieve so much early success.

Trucking and transportation is a $700 billion industry that represents the backbone of global commerce. In many industries, transportation costs accounts for as much as 5% of sales and 33% of profits, and today more than 70% of all shipments (by dollar value) happen by truck (vs. other modes such as rail, air, water, etc.)

BCV has prior experience in the supply chain and logistics arena. Back in 2004, we invested in an amazing entrepreneur (Mick Mountz) and company (Kiva Systems), who used robots and machine learning software to revolutionize pick and pack warehouses, a key piece of the supply chain. Mick eventually sold Kiva Systems to Amazon for $775M in 2012. Transforming logistics was also a critical success factor behind Jet.com’s e-commerce business (recently bought by Wal-Mart for $3.3 billion).

Matt and team have done an incredible job signing up some of the largest shippers in the country. These shippers use the FourKites platform to ensure their goods are being delivered on time and efficiently, thereby improving on-time performance from low 90% range to 97-98%, which translates into less wait times at the warehouses, lower stock-outs, faster inventory turns, and ultimately, happier customers.

We are thrilled to be partnering with Matt, the rest of his team, and his existing group of seed investors, to build the data backbone powering the $700 billion trucking space.